“Good-by, dear, dear Daddy; good-by,” she sobbed, and then fell prostrate across the inert body of her father from which his spirit had just taken flight.
Jack lifted her gently back to her own bunk, while Bill drew a blanket over the dead man’s face and turned away with something mighty like tears in his blue eyes.
That night was the most solemn and heart-rending one any of these young folks had ever experienced, for to the young, death is ever gloomy. The boys built a good fire, lit half-a-dozen candles and did all they could to soften the weight of the blow which had fallen on Eileen, but their efforts were in vain.
To add to the melancholy of the occasion the dogs, instead of crawling into their holes after they had eaten their half-rations of fish, sat in a semi-circle outside of the cabin door and in the ghostly light of the streaming aurora borealis, with their noses pointed skyward, they spent the greater part of the night howling mournfully a last requiem for the departed soul.
The next morning the boys set to work to fashion a casket to hold the remains of Michael Carscadden, and it took them the best part of three days to finish it. Then they put his body in his sleeping bag and laid it in the rough hewn box.
Eileen was so weak and dazed she seemed hardly to realize what it was all about. As she lay on her bunk she only stared with wide-open, pathetic eyes at these last sad arrangements. It was merciful that she did not understand to the full.
The boys gave her all the food they could scrape together and did without themselves for they had to get her strong enough to travel. Starvation was close on their heels. Bill’s solution for the shortage of food was that they kill one of the sled-dogs but Jack would not listen to such a thing.
“I’m no cannibal Bill, and I’d as leave eat my grandmother as I would one of our dogs,” was the way he disposed of this brash idea of his partner.
Jack figured that they could last just three days longer and by the end of that time they would have to be back at their base of supplies, or they would never get there.
“We must leave your father now, Eileen, and will you tell us where it is he wished to sleep his last sleep?” Jack was finally forced to ask her.